Harnessing Gaia data to understand the accretion history of the Milky Way.

The Gaia satellite continues to provide the most accurate astrometric information on Milky Way stars ever produced. I plan to utilise this in conjunction with complementary photometric and spectroscopic surveys to probe the formation and evolution of the Milky Way. I aim to analyse and determine the distribution and structure of the Milky Way dark matter halo from kinematics of stars bound by the potential. We already know that halo stars hold an abundance of valuable information about how the galaxy formed and it's accretion history. The dark matter component will certainly contain more details about the Milky Way's past.

I will also be working on finding and characterising substructure in the halo and understanding it's origins which can help to improve constraints on the low mass end of the galaxy mass function. Given the flux limitations of galaxy photometric surveys, this type of analysis can only realistically be performed in the Milky Way and nearest local group galaxies.

Another avenue I will be pursuing with Gaia data is searching for and classifying strongly varying astrophysical objects. Several types of variable stars in particular are incredibly useful for studies in Milky Way dynamics due to their well constrained period-luminosity relations and improving our datasets of these objects will be extremely beneficial. Increasing the observed populations of high variability AGNs and more exotic transients can significantly improve our understanding of these systems and events. This information may prove extremely valuable as the astrophysics community prepares for first light of LSST.